On the eve of the Cannes Film Festival's official selection announcement, a major competition prospect has emerged in Tommy Lee Jones' frontier drama "The Homesman," starring Jones and Hilary Swank as a claim jumper and a pioneer woman undertaking a perilous journey across the Midwest. Also featuring Meryl Streep, William Fichtner and Hailee Steinfeld, the film marks Jones' first directorial outing since his 2005 Western, "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada," which walked away from the Croisette with two major prizes. Like "Three Burials," "The Homesman" was financed and produced by Luc Besson's EuropaCorp, which is also handling international sales on the film.

Also set to make its world premiere in Cannes is 20th Century Fox/DreamWorks Animation's "How to Train Your Dragon 2," which will receive an out-of-competition screening, in keeping with the festival's tradition of bowing a U.S. studio blockbuster the first weekend. The sequel, directed by Dean DeBlois, is the latest of several DreamWorks toons that have filled the bill at Cannes over more than a decade, starting with 2001′s "Shrek" and 2004′s "Shrek 2" (both of which landed in competition), and continuing with 2008′s "Kung Fu Panda" and 2012′s "Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted."

The selections of "How to Train Your Dragon 2" and "The Homesman" are among a handful of details to have emerged from under the usual veil of secrecy surrounding festival topper Thierry Fremaux's down-to-the-wire selection process. Still, as previously reported, it's a safe bet that Bennett Miller's true-crime saga "Foxcatcher," a Sony Classics pickup (it's being sold internationally by Panorama Media) starring Steve Carell, Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo, will snag another of the 20 or so competition slots in play.

The festival's 67th edition is looking like a particularly strong one for Canadian auteurs: Competition veterans David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan will be back with "Maps to the Stars" and "The Captive," respectively, and they'll be joined by Quebecois enfant terrible Xavier Dolan, cracking the festival's top program for the first time with his mother-and-child drama "Mommy" (he was previously at Cannes with "I Killed My Mother," "Heartbeats" and "Laurence Anyways"). All three Canuck titles are being sold by eOne.

British masters will also be well represented, with Ken Loach's "Jimmy's Hall" (Wild Bunch) and Mike Leigh's "Mr. Turner" (Focus Features Intl.), a Sony Classics release Stateside, almost certain to make the competition cut.

Likely to clock in with the competition's most imposing running time will be Nuri Bilge Ceylan's nearly three-and-a-half-hour drama "Winter Sleep." It's the longest entry to date from the Turkish auteur, who has one of the strongest Cannes track records of any current filmmaker; his "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" won the 2011 Grand Prix, shared with Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's "The Kid With a Bike." Speaking of the Dardennes, the Belgian brothers will be back in competition this year as well, this time with their Marion Cotillard starrer "Two Days, One Night" (Wild Bunch), which IFC's Sundance Selects is distributing Stateside.

Michel Hazanavicius, whose "The Artist" began its road to Oscar glory at Cannes in 2011, will be back at the festival with "The Search" (Wild Bunch),his latest collaboration with his star/wife, Berenice Bejo. It's unclear where in the official selection the film will screen; it's worth noting that "The Artist" was originally programmed out of competition before being upgraded to the main program, where it won Jean Dujardin the actor prize. Two French titles previously tipped for Cannes but not likely to be ready in time are Benoit Jacquot's "Three Hearts" and Xavier Beauvois' "La Rancon de la gloire."